Gavin Esler

“People in the U.S. who feel they need guns or enjoy gun sports of various types, are, in other words, decent, law-abiding, generally honest members of society. Their wish to have guns should be respected.”

“A British politician who cloaks himself in the mantle of God is immediately regarded with suspicion.”

“If someone appears on television and makes a comment, and we quote that comment, we are being accurate. But are we actually being sensible if we don't know if that comment is based on any facts whatsoever? It is something that journalists have to be much more aware of.”

“Funerals should celebrate a life.”

“During my childhood in the Cold War, my family saw America as a great ally in our common struggle to keep back Soviet communism.”

“It's perhaps easier to say what prog rock isn't than what it is: it's not three-minute pop songs, it's not straightforward rock, metal, blues or jazz, but can have elements of all them and more. It's a form that is on the boundaries of many different forms, that is open to all sorts of influences.”

“Public displays of puritanical religiosity mask the private perversions of the real Washington behind closed doors.”

“Leaders of organisations, political parties and large businesses frequently fail to talk in a straight and entirely truthful fashion.”

“I remember politicians in Northern Ireland were sometimes called 'verbal incendiarists,' as they didn't actually do anything but they said certain things. So when you hear certain politicians using nasty language, that colours our lives. It makes some other people think it's OK to racially abuse people.”

“There is so much unreliable information on the internet and in the media.”

“I am the typical British aspiring working class. To be called 'elite' by people who have inherited wealth and run hedge funds or worked in the City of London, I don't criticise them for it, but the idea is frankly laughable. Just ridiculous.”

“There is a common British delusion that we 'understand' America. We don't. Watching 'Friends' listening to Bruce Springsteen, eating at McDonald's and visiting Disneyland does not do it.”

“Amateurism has its place in government, in journalism and also on the tennis court, but lack of expertise means politicians routinely promise far more than they achieve.”

“The thing I love most about going to the Rocky Mountain National Park is that mobile phones don't work, and there's no electricity and no TV.”

“We're never encouraged by the producers to ask questions in any way. The most important thing to be is authentic and to be yourself. If I feel someone has answered a question then I'll move on. If I feel it's important enough, I will pursue the question.”

“In Britain, politicians who openly discuss their spirituality are about as welcome as Jehovah' s Witnesses on the doorstep, and the British associate the mixture of politics and religion as a heady cocktail best reserved for the mass irrationality of Northern Ireland, Iran, Kashmir, and the Middle East.”

“The skills necessary to change nappies or negotiate Brexit are obviously very different, but both involve a great deal of trust in the competence of the people doing the job.”

“Ronald Reagan offered us an international vision divided between the free world and the evil empire. Even if this was a cartoonish view, it helped us make sense of everything from Star Wars to industrial policy.”

“The Cold War, Bosnia and Ukraine remind us that peace is fragile. Iraq and Syria remind us that no society or culture is immune from conflict.”

“At seven years old, I won a scholarship to George Heriot's School, an independent school in Edinburgh, and I was there until I was 17.”